Donald Trump Jr. said Monday he would go to ‘great lengths’ to prevent GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley from joining his father’s campaign.

Trump Jr. said during a Christmas Day interview that he views Haley as the ‘preferred candidate’ of the Washington establishment.

‘I wouldn’t have her on, and I would go to great lengths to make sure that that doesn’t happen,’ Trump Jr. said on Newsmax’s ‘The Balance.’

‘Nikki Haley wants never-ending wars,’ he continued. ‘She’s a puppet of the establishment in Washington D.C. She’s the new favorite candidate of the billionaire class, because they want control — no different than academia at Harvard and using, you know, their billions to exercising influence. They want someone they control. Ron DeSantis has proven that he doesn’t have what it takes to be on that stage. He’s embarrassed himself that way. She’s now the preferred candidate.’

Trump Jr. suggested Haley would try to sabotage Trump’s campaign ‘from within’ if she was chosen as his running mate.

‘No, I would not want Nikki Haley to be there,’ he added. ‘By the way, all you’d get is her and team trying to destroy Donald Trump from within, forever. The second she ever got that, you know, anointment, it would be a disaster of epic proportions. So, I would hope that never is on the table, and I don’t think it is.’

Trump Jr.’s comments came after Haley said she didn’t want the former president in the White House again, arguing that he would only bring ‘chaos’ to the country.

‘Our world is on fire,’ she said during a recent post-debate interview. ‘And you can’t defeat Democrat chaos with Republican chaos, and Donald Trump brings us chaos. So it’s not about being fit, it’s just I don’t think he’s the right person to be president.’

Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, previously told Newsmax that she wouldn’t rule out Trump choosing Haley as his running mate.

‘Crazier things have happened,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I would never say never with Donald J. Trump. Never say never.’

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Haley campaign for a response to Trump Jr.’s comments.

Federal prosecutors opposed New Jersey Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez and his co-defendants’ request for a two-month delay to their bribery trial, set for May, urging a U.S. judge to reject their plea on Tuesday.

‘The current schedule set by the court is expedited, but reasonable,’ Damian Wiliams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote to U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein. ‘Nothing in the defendant’s request for an adjournment, made more than two months after the schedule was set, justifies a material deviation from this considered schedule.’

Last week, Menendez’s defense lawyers argued they didn’t have enough time to sift through some 6.7 million documents in time for a May trial date and cited the ‘complexity of this case.’ But prosecutors asserted they had completed ‘good-faith efforts to facilitate the defense’s efficient review.’

‘The government has taken great pains to organize the discovery and to assist counsel’s review of it,’ the prosecutors’ filing read. 

‘Other assertions regarding the amount of time they allegedly need – such as their desire to take unspecified investigative steps, their plan to file a challenge to the sufficiency of the indictment, their desire to mount a constitutional challenge to a federal criminal statute, and their plan to file suppression motions – are not unique to this case and do not justify a multiple-month adjournment,’ it continued. 

Menendez, along with his wife Nadine and three New Jersey businessmen – Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes – were first charged in the federal bribery scheme on Sept. 23. 

FBI and IRS criminal investigators allege that Menendez and his wife accepted several gold bars and other gifts from Daibes, a New Jersey developer and former bank chairman accused of banking crimes. Menendez allegedly worked to help appoint a prosecutor who would be sympathetic to Daibes, according to the indictment.

The unsealed indictment alleges that from at least 2018 through 2022, Menendez and his wife ‘engaged in a corrupt relationship’ with Daibes, Hana and Uribe.

The couple is accused of accepting ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes in exchange for using Menendez’s power and influence as a senator to seek to protect and enrich Hana, Uribe, and Daibes and to benefit the Arab Republic of Egypt.’

The alleged bribes included cash, gold bars, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low- or no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and ‘other things of value.’ After the investigation was underway, Menendez reportedly disclosed that his family had accepted gold bars in 2020.

According to prosecutors, Menendez allegedly shared confidential U.S. government information with Hana, an Egyptian American businessman, to clandestinely support the Egyptian government. The indictment contends that Menendez exerted inappropriate pressure on a Department of Agriculture official to safeguard Hana’s business monopoly granted by Egypt. In return, Hana purportedly funneled profits from his monopoly back to Menendez.

Menendez faces additional charges of acting as a foreign agent and accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes to benefit the Egyptian government through his ‘power and influence as a Senator,’ according to the superseding indictment filed by a grand jury in Manhattan in October.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed another motion with the district court, which seeks to tamp down what former President Donald Trump’s legal team can tell a jury in his federal trial currently scheduled for March.

The motion, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is seeking to limit what statements Trump can make leading up to his scheduled March 4 federal trial on alleged 2020 election interference. 

That includes a request to prevent Trump from telling the jury he is being prosecuted by the DOJ in coordination with President Biden, as well as suggestions by Trump of undercover agents fomenting violence at the Capitol riots, and of ‘foreign influence’ in the 2020 election.

‘Through public statements, filings, and argument in hearings before the Court, the defense has attempted to inject into this case partisan political attacks and irrelevant and prejudicial issues that have no place in a jury trial,’ Smith’s team told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

‘Although the Court can recognize these efforts for what they are and disregard them, the jury — if subjected to them — may not. The Court should not permit the defendant to turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation, and should reject his attempt to inject politics into this proceeding. To ensure that the jury remains focused on its fact-finding duty and applies the law as instructed by the Court, the defendant’s improper evidence and argument should be excluded.’

The filing claims that ‘through his groundless demand for discovery of evidence regarding ‘investigative misconduct,’’ Trump ‘has suggested that he intends to impeach the integrity of the investigation by raising wholly false claims such as the Government’s non-existent ‘coordination with the Biden Administration’ and other empty allegations recycled from the selective and vindictive prosecution motion that he based on anonymous sources in newspaper articles.

‘Although the defendant is entitled to cross-examine the Government’s law enforcement witnesses about matters fairly within the scope of their direct testimony, he cannot raise wholly irrelevant topics in an effort to confuse and distract the jury. Much as the defendant would like it otherwise, this trial should be about the facts and the law, not politics.’

The motion seeks to prevent Trump from telling jurors about the potential punishment he could face if convicted, as well as blaming law enforcement agencies for a lack of preparation in advance of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

‘Evidence about undercover actors holds no probative value here,’ Smith’s team wrote in the filing regarding the riot, saying the ‘defendant also appears poised to blame undercover agents, government informants, or confidential human sources (collectively, ‘undercover actors’) for the violence at the Capitol on January 6.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

The motion to preclude Trump from introducing broad categories of arguments is a way for prosecutors to try to set parameters on what information they believe the jury should, or should not, hear when the case reaches trial. It was filed as the case is effectively on hold during an appeal of the former president’s claims that he is immune from prosecution for acts taken while in the White House.

‘A bank robber cannot defend himself by blaming the bank’s security guard for failing to stop him,’ prosecutors wrote. ‘A fraud defendant cannot claim to the jury that his victims should have known better than to fall for his scheme. And the defendant cannot argue that law enforcement should have prevented the violence he caused and obstruction he intended.’

The Supreme Court declined last week to get involved in the dispute for now, but a federal appeals panel is set to hear arguments on the matter on Jan. 9. The trial is scheduled for March 4 in federal court in Washington, D.C., but it could be postponed by appeals of the immunity issue.

Chutkan imposed a partial gag order against Trump in October blocking him from making statements targeting Smith, his staff, potential witnesses and court personnel.

Chutkan said the former president is able to criticize the Justice Department in general terms and has the right to post his view that the case against him is politically motivated. However, the judge said Trump cannot post attacks against prosecutors or court staff.

A federal appeals court upheld key parts of that gag order in December.

‘An Appeals Court has just largely upheld the Gag Order against me in the ridiculous J6 Case, where the Unselect January 6th Committee deleted and destroyed almost all Documents and Evidence, saying that I can be barred from talking and, in effect, telling the truth,’ Trump posted on Truth Social after that ruling. 

‘In other words, people can speak violently and viciously against me, or attack me in any form, but I am not allowed to respond, in kind. What is becoming of our First Amendment, what is becoming of our Country? We will appeal this decision!’

Trump pleaded not guilty in federal court to all four federal charges stemming from Smith’s investigation into 2020 election interference and the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

The judge presiding over the New York Trump Organization trial also imposed a partial gag order to prevent all parties from engaging in any verbal attacks against court staff after Trump criticized a member of the judge’s office on social media.

An appeals court stay was temporarily issued on the New York gag order, but it was reinstated in November.

‘Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Biden’s ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith, the out of control Lunatic who just hired outside attorneys, fresh from the SWAMP (unprecedented!), to help him with his poorly executed WITCH HUNT against ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Christmas Day.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

As the deadline for Congress to agree on funding most government programs and agencies in the upcoming fiscal year draws near, the Senate has passed only three of the 12 appropriations bills in a joint ‘minibus’ package, leaving crucial decisions pending after the holiday recess.

In November, the Senate voted to extend funding through September 2024 for the Agriculture, military construction and Veterans Affairs, and Transportation bills. No funding bills have been considered since, even though the Appropriations Committee approved the 12 spending bills with mostly bipartisan support. 

The House also passed a temporary extension of last year’s government funding levels, but with two separate deadlines: Passing appropriations bills for military construction and Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy and Water, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development by Jan. 19; the remaining eight appropriations bills must be worked out by Feb. 2.

The Senate adopted the same staggered deadlines for its spending bills.

Should lawmakers miss the initial Jan. 19 deadline, they’ll need a short-term continuing resolution (CR), essentially a temporary spending patch, to stretch funding until Sept. 30. Failure to do so would activate the Fiscal Responsibility Act, initiating a 1% across-the-board cut of more than $50 billion starting in April.

After the minibus vote, Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, ‘The only way things get done in divided government is bipartisanship.’

‘The American people won’t support the futile exercise of passing partisan, extremist legislation that has no chance of becoming law, which is what the House is doing right now,’ he said at the time.

The House, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., approved an appropriations bill that significantly slashes the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget while pushing the Department of the Interior to ramp up energy and mineral production on public lands. However, Senate Democrats have signaled that the bill lacks sufficient support in the upper chamber to advance further.

‘Their appropriations bills are loaded with poison pills that they know are not going to be accepted in this chamber or by Democrats in their chamber,’ Schumer said on the floor last month.

Prior to the holiday recess, some GOP lawmakers expressed concern that no appropriation bills were being brought to the floor. So far, Schumer still has not scheduled any votes on appropriations-related bills when the upper chamber returns on Jan. 8.

Instead, the first vote will be whether lawmakers will confirm John A. Kazen of Texas to be U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Texas. The Senate spent the last few weeks before the holiday recess confirming several of Biden’s judicial nominees.

‘The only thing you can come to conclusion is his goal is not to pass spending bills but to have an omnibus,’ Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital in an interview before the holiday recess.

Other government agencies that still need funding in the queue include Homeland Security, Energy and Water, Labor and Education, and others. The Senate previously approved a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill for government programs throughout 2023.

Senators will have their work cut out for them when they return Jan. 8 because they still have to hash out a border security measure that will be ingested into the multibillion-dollar national supplemental security package that would send aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.